On July 14, 2022, Mayor and City Council have approved adding public housing to Chandler, with help by the federal Housing and Urban Development Department. Video in the article.
On July 14, 2022, the Chandler City Council approved for Chandler to apply to the federal Department for Housing and Urban Development, HUD, in order to build new public housing in Chandler.
The resolution was submitted by city staff Amy Jacobson, showing how often it is government employees, not citizens, who drive the agenda of elected officials. All council members, except Rene Lopez, voted for the resolution. Lopez appeared to be absent.
The plan is to build a new facility and then move residents out of existing facilities into the new facilities in order to enable a renovation of the existing facilities.
Currently the City of Chandler has over 300 public housing units available. The resolution would increase the number of units to close to 500.
Citizen Lesley Minkus (pictured below) has started a petition against the resolution. He argues that the border crisis would lead to illegal immigrants being bused to and housed in Chandler public housing. His petition is shown in a picture at the end of the article.
Ruth Jones, who challenges mayor Kevin Hartke in the Aug 2 primary, had a tense exchange with the mayor. Jones appears to take a stronger position than Minkus, arguing that public housing is unfair, since it gives resources to some people, those living in public housing, while not giving them, or even taking from those who live in their own private residences, which they maintain at their own cost.
Video of the council meeting, with exchange between Jones and Hartke
Jones presented a number of pictures showing homeless encampments throughout Chandler. After her presentation, mayor Hartke implied that these were old pictures and that the encampments had already been cleaned up. Jones appeared to take exception to that, telling the mayor that she had personally taken all these pictures in the last 90 days.
Political implications
The conservative and libertarian view on this matter is simple. The government has no role in taking from and distributing resourced to citizens because it should treat all citizens equally. Citizens should neither pay differential taxes, nor should they received benefits. The government, very small and mainly concerned with organizing defense and upholding the law, should fund itself through taxing the consumption of vice, e.g. drugs and alcohol, rather than punishing virtue, i.e. income, intact families, commerce. The US government was more or less organized like this before the prohibition and introduction of the federal income tax. There should be no public housing. Land should be used for private housing, ideally single family homes, not to hand out free housing to some while taxing property owners for their private homes.
From a political strategy point of view, the vote, in which Republicans joined liberals, is a classic example of the exchange of short term gain, $22 Million from HUD, i.e. the federal government, for long term political harm to the right. The right gave away California in a similar manner. This is because people living in public housing are a voting base for the left. Increasing public housing helps to over time move the voter base in communities to the left. This is one reason why virtually all big cities are deep blue: massive government funded housing blocks housing large numbers of people that are canvassed by the left and form a voting block for them.
A picture of Minkus' petition is shown below. Citizens can call Minkus at 480-664-8736 to find out how to sign the petition.
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